


Fingertips and Fairytales

by NerdWhoSaysNi



Series: Marvel Oneshots [10]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 18:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16539662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdWhoSaysNi/pseuds/NerdWhoSaysNi
Summary: This was born from someone asking whether Loki would have self-harm scars. That said, trigger warning: includes mentions of self-harm and torture.





	Fingertips and Fairytales

**Author's Note:**

> This was born from someone asking whether Loki would have self-harm scars. That said, trigger warning: includes mentions of self-harm and torture.

Haley sat curled up in the window seat with a book on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She was watching the sunset over the city and waiting for her fiance to come home. Loki had spent the last few days on Asgard to help Thor draw up a plan for diplomacy and possible peace talks amongst the Nine Realms. Before he left, he’d said he would be home this evening. Haley trusted that he would be back soon, and she was patient. She was content to watch the sky change from milky blue to sherbet orange to hazy grey. 

When the bedroom door opened and closed again, Hal got to her feet. “Hey,” she greeted softly. “How did it go?”

Loki pulled off his helmet and cape and ran his fingers through his hair. “It could have been better. But it definitely could have been worse.” With Haley’s help, he removed his armor and set it aside. “How was your day, love?”

Haley mumbled a reply about it being okay, but she was distracted by the faint bruise on his cheekbone and temple. “What is this from?” She brushed her fingers over the bruise and hoped it was healing, not forming. “Was there a fight? Are you okay?” 

Loki knew his fiancee so well by now, but anyone could read the worry in her clear eyes. “I’m fine. There was no fight, but it seems our Asgardian civilians have become more vocal in their opinions. It was just a shoe, nothing serious.” But even as he spoke, she was untying his tunic to look for more bruises. 

Loki finished removing his tunic and changed from his leather breeches into a pair of soft lounge pants. Sitting on the bed, he borrowed a hair elastic from Haley’s nightstand and tied his hair into what she affectionately called a manbun. It was summer, it was still fairly hot out, and he hated being choked by his hair in the middle of the night. At least, those were the reasons he would tell people if they ever asked. But he also knew how much Hal liked it. She was sitting on her side of the bed, already wearing her pjs and with her hair pulled up. As usual, there was a book on her nightstand. Everything about her was peaceful and calm. Since they had begun dating more than four years ago, Loki noticed how much easier things seemed to be. Nothing specific, just everything. Decisions, stressful situations, battles, daily life- everything was more relaxed. And when he did get angry or impatient, she was right there to soothe him.

Hal watched him tie back his hair, something he didn’t do often but she knew he did it for her. In the dying light, she noticed a faint pink scratch just under his ear. “What is this from?” she asked. She crawled across the bed and sat behind him. One finger traced the scratch.

“Training. The foam had peeled off a sparring weapon, and Jace got me with it.” Loki let her fingers explore his skin and ease the stress from his tense muscles. It was something she had taken to doing each time he returned from a long trip, and he would readily admit that it helped. Within minutes, his posture softened and he relaxed into her. He could feel her fingers traveling down his spine, her thumbs massaging circles as they went. Until they reached the scar from the war. She had developed a habit of absentmindedly sneaking a hand up his shirt and touching the scar whenever they were sitting together. This time, however, her touch was different. It was more intentional. Instead of brushing her thumb back and forth, he felt her tracing the matted tissue with a few fingers. He had gotten used to her feeling this scar so often that it usually didn’t affect him, but this was different. This time, he was getting goosebumps. 

“You never told me about the surgery,” she said. 

“We weren’t exactly on speaking terms,” he reminded her. “It was long and tedious, somewhat problematic.” He knew her next questions already and answered it before she could ask. “Yes, it was painful, but it was necessary. Numbing me would have defeated the purpose of trying to restore feeling.” He felt her snuggle closer to him. “I’ve felt worse before, and it was certainly worth it.”

Haley rested her chin on his shoulder and kissed the scar under his ear. As she pulled away, she noticed another scar just inside his hairline, thin, jagged, and silvery white. “Where did this one come from?” Another habit she had developed was to touch any scar she was referring to. It was a habit Loki never minded.

“My first time on a horse. Thor’s horse spooked, and when he fell, it scared my horse, and I fell as well.”

Haley kissed that scar too before brushing her thumb along a pink gouge that spread down his tricep. “And this one?”

“A battle. I forget which one and how.”

She kissed down the length of the mark before finding a group of silver flecks on his shoulder blade. Loki told her about how he got those from the battle in NYC when the Hulk thrashed him around. This pattern continued with Hal finding a scar, Loki explaining how it came to be, and Haley kissing it before moving on to another. Loki was moved by her gentleness and sincerity, and how she accepted every part of him and his convoluted history with sweet kisses. 

When she had found every scar on his back, Hal paused. There were plenty of little nicks and scrapes and a few longer, uglier marks, but she knew this couldn’t be all of them. Loki had been through a lot more than what he was showing her. And not once had he hesitated to tell her about them. She realized he must be hiding the ones he was ashamed of. “I want to see them, all of them. All the scars you’re hiding because of what they represent, what they are reminders of. Will you let me see them?”

Loki hung his head and sighed. “Haley, I-”

“Please?”

Her plea hung between them until he closed his eyes and muttered his magic. His form became unfocused for a moment before reappearing, except now, Hal could see every mar, every discoloration, every memory. As her fingers retraced his skin, Loki could feel them trembling. 

Her breath caught in her chest as if some giant fist had closed around her ribs. There were so many. Long scratches, war wounds, strikes from blades, patches of discolored burns, some raised and ropey, others sunken and gouged, some pink or red, others silvery and pale, some smooth and properly healed, others puckered and looking like they could bleed again at any moment. She could now see all the scars from the shrapnel of the bomb that broke his spine; she could make out the carefully inflicted tortures; and overlaying many of them was a dark, rugged mark. “Loki,” she gasped, her voice raw. When she let her eyes wander from his back to his arms, she could almost feel her heart break. The insides of his forearms were layered with slashes that could be easily interpreted as self-harm scars. 

She lifted his forearm to her lips and kissed every scar she could find before doing the same to the other arm. “Loki,” she whispered again. It hurt her to see how much pain he had suffered, how much he had endured. She had asked to see them, but she didn’t dare ask for their history. She didn’t want to imagine him in pain, and she certainly didn’t want to make him relive any of it if he didn’t have to. 

Loki’s eyes were still closed. He didn’t want to see the fear or horror in her face while she looked at him. She had seen him in his Jotun form, but this was different. He couldn’t change the fact that he was a frost giant, but he could have avoided many of these scars. He could have made better choices or done any of them differently. Instead, he was forever stuck with these ugly reminders of who he was and had been. 

Lightly, Hal placed her hand on his cheek and turned his face towards her. Above both eyes, three parallel scars traveled from his forehead, down over his eyes, and ended just below his cheekbones. The bottoms were deeper and more fanned out, like someone had tried to claw out his eyes. There were lots of small burns peppered over his face, and one large burn that threatened to obscure one corner of his mouth- like he had been slapped by a flaming hand. But among them all, Hal could still make out the milky white pinpricks around his lips from when dwarves sewed his mouth shut because he had used tricky wordplay to avoid being beheaded in a wager. 

Loki still hadn’t opened his eyes. Not when she traced the scratches around his eyes, not when she held his face with both hands, and not when she brushed her fingers around his lips. He wondered if maybe he should stop her, but her fingertips on his lips made him hesitate. Next, Hal placed featherlight kisses to his eyelids and the destroyed skin below. An actual angel could not have been more gentle, but then, he wasn’t convinced that Haley was not already an angel.

With his face still held in both hands, she kissed around his lips for each pinprick, then finally kissed him properly. Loki reciprocated and kept a hand at the back of her neck to hold her close. He kissed her again and laid back against the pillows before pulling Hal onto his lap. “You do remember the affect your touch has on me, my dear?” he warned her. He had been good this long, but the more her fingers and mouth explored his body, the more he wanted to badly misbehave.

When she sat back, Loki opened his eyes. One was still the green she loved, but the other eye drew her attention. The white was pink and red with broken vessels, and a cloudiness covered the iris and pupil. Even in the low light of their room, Loki could see the pain on her face. She returned her lips to his skin and kissed around his neck where it looked like a chain or rope had tangled around him and cut or rubbed through his skin. From his neck, she kissed the long thin scars around his collarbone, but stopped just above his chest. A dark, knotted scar rested in the center of his chest, matching the same one she had found on his back. Entry and exit wounds. Gently, she placed her palm over the scar and whispered, “How?”

“Svartalfheim,” he replied. 

Of course. When the Kursed had impaled Loki on the same blade Loki used to kill the beast. She leaned forward and kissed the toughened wound. Loki felt her warm lips on his cool skin, but there was something else. When she sat up and wiped her face, he realized she was crying. Her hot tears landed on his chest and rolled down to soak into the waistband of his pants. Taking her face in his hands, he wiped her tears away and brought her back up to kiss her. “Shh,” he soothed, brushing another thumb over her cheek. “It’s okay, love.” 

“But it’s not. It’s not okay. You’re not okay. You’ve gone through so much pain and so much suffering, and I wasn’t there for you. I couldn’t stop it or help you- and a few of them... I caused.” Her fingers caressed a stab wound in his side, just above his last rib. She didn’t have to ask where it came from because she knew. The two of them had been in a fight in the warehouse in Russia during WWIII, and Loki had grabbed Hal, trying to get her out of harm’s way, but she thought he was turning against her. So she had stabbed him. And then immediately regretted it every moment of her life since then. “It’s not okay,” she mumbled. “I love you, and I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I got most of my scars before I ever met you, darling. Many of them so old, the English language wasn’t yet formed.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and held her close to his side. “You’re not at fault for any of my pain.” Her fingers still brushed the cut on his ribs. “Except that one.” He turned his head so he could kiss her again. “But darling, each of my experiences, all that I’ve gone through, has brought me to where I am now. With you. And I wouldn’t rewrite any of these stories.” She had stopped crying, but he knew by her touch that she was still upset. “There are some I’m more ashamed of than others, some I would rather forget, and those are the ones I hide. Still, there’s nothing I would change.”

Haley sat up and straddled his lap again. “But I still wish there was something I could have done.”

“I did enjoy what you were doing earlier,” he said. 

“Oh, I’m sure you did.” She could see the mischief in his eyes. Even though she knew what he was up to, she had to admit that she was enjoying it too.

His mouth curled into a smirk as she bent and placed her lips to his skin again. This time, she began kissing a cross shape on his stomach. The horizontal line spread from rib to rib, and the vertical line extended from his sternum down his abdomen. She was less tender this time, teasing him and taking her time. When she reached the waistband on his pants, she stopped and curled her fingers between his skin and the fabric. 

Hal knew what he was expecting next, so instead, she returned her mouth to his own. Loki held her waist and turned her onto her back. His kisses wandered down her jaw and neck to a little scar on her collarbone. He kissed the scratch before lifting her shirt and finding a scar on her hip she had gotten in the warehouse. Now, it was his turn to leave little adoring, torturous kisses over her skin. Because Hal was remarkably ticklish, it wasn’t long before she stopped him and they held each other close. 

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too. You and every choice, every circumstance, every story, and every scar that has made you into the man you are today.” 

He felt her fingers tracing around the exit wound on his back and smiled. “You haven’t found my favorite yet.”

Her eyebrows knitted together and her fingers stopped moving. “Which one is that?”

“I don’t hide it. It’s on the back of my left knee and curves just under the joint.”

As she always did when she noticed a new scar, she asked, “How did you get it?”

Loki smiled and held her closer. “Do you remember when I chased you through a circus tent in an alternate universe?” 

Haley nodded. “Sort of. It’s hazy.”

“The Avengers, all your parents, had been captured by the Enchantress. She had cursed you all into another universe, and I followed to rescue you all. None of the others recognized me, but you did. You stopped. But when I tried to approach you, you ran. I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed. You ran into a circus and I remember thinking that if I gave up, there would be no chance of winning. I had to convince you. So I chased you through those tents and was nearly beheaded by staging a few times. When I finally caught up, it was only because you were trying to escape from some cretin trying to put his hands on you.”

“Right, and you fought him for me.”

Loki nodded. “I did. And you watched until you knew I would win before running again.”

“But you caught me.”

“Miraculously. The same beam that tripped you is the beam that sliced the back of my leg. But I couldn’t let you get away again. I should have been more gentle when I grabbed your arm. Had I been, maybe you wouldn’t have stomped my toes into pancakes. Or kneed me in the crotch. Twice.”

Hal blushed and buried her face in his neck. “I remember that! God, I was so scared that you would be evil again, that you were going to drag me to the Enchantress.”

He tipped her chin back up so he could see her eyes. “I distinctly remember looking at you and forgetting everything I had been about to tell you because I had never seen you so close before. I had never touched you before. And in that moment, I was stunned.”

“You seemed quite as smooth as usual to me.” She felt down his back from the exit wound, over his hip, down his thigh to his knee, but she couldn’t reach far enough. “I had such a crush on you even then. One of the reasons I struggled so hard to escape is because I thought you would discover my feelings by magic or something if you touched me.”

“I didn’t need magic. Your eyes and heartbeat spoke for themselves.” He pulled her flush against his chest and felt her heartbeat increase just as it had that afternoon so so many years ago. “And it was that moment that I realized I wanted to hold you and keep you safe for as long as I could breathe.”

Haley couldn’t kiss the scar behind his knee, so she opted for a closer substitute and kissed his lips instead. When she pulled away, her fingers had found another scar between his index and middle fingers. “And these?”

Loki recounted tale after tale to her until he knew she was asleep. Kissing her forehead, he whispered goodnight and closed his own eyes. In the dark, they had laid their skin and souls bare to one another, and Loki felt as if some massive weight had been lifted from him. He couldn’t rid himself of the scars, but he could rid himself of the noxious perceptions of how he got them. And with Hal’s help, he had even developed a new love for a few in particular.


End file.
